Nana

3Title sums to 12 and reduces to 3 — The Telling, where the reference files an act of telling.

What it is

Ai Yazawa's Nana began serialisation in 2000 in the shojo magazine Cookie, though its concerns are firmly adult. Two women both called Nana meet on a train to Tokyo and end up sharing an apartment: one a punk vocalist pursuing a music career, the other drifting toward whichever relationship will hold her.

Why it is regarded so highly

It takes its characters seriously as people who make bad decisions. Neither Nana is presented as correct. Their flaws are structural rather than charming, and the series follows the consequences over years rather than resolving them.

The friendship is the central relationship. Romantic plots are substantial and consistently subordinate to what the two women are to each other, including the ways that bond becomes possessive and damaging.

Ambition is treated honestly. The music career material is unsentimental about what success requires and what it costs the people around it.

The art and fashion

Yazawa trained in fashion, and clothing in Nana is characterisation rather than decoration — specific, period-accurate, and telling you what a character wants to be seen as. It is one of the most influential visual styles in modern shojo and josei.

Its status

The series has been on indefinite hiatus since 2009 following Yazawa's illness, and stops mid-story. This is the most frequently cited unfinished work in the medium, and anyone starting it should know it does not conclude.

The title by its numbers

Nana12total12 → 3

総画 strokes4volumes21 → 3debut year2000 → 2

Set against the Pythagorean table, the title totals 12. Reduced, that is 3.

The reference files it as an act of telling. The number's contribution is communication, creativity, and the public stage — and with it the 3's instinct to turn everything into a story worth telling, which is the thread the reference follows here.

Beneath the 3 sit two smaller figures: 2 in the vowels, 1 in the consonants. Cooperation underneath, initiative on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.

Counted another way the answer holds. 総画 strokes is 4, volumes is 21, a 3 and debut year is 2000, a 2, and volumes reduces to the same 3. Two systems, one figure.

Read on the 3's terms, this entry asks you to watch the technique rather than the plot it is carrying. The 3 talks past the point. Where an entry here runs long, it is usually because the technique was more fun to describe than it was important. The other entries that reduce to 3 are collected on The Telling.